Drama killed ‘Start-Ups: Silicon Valley’

Bravo’s attempt at portraying the high-tech lifestyle has come to a merciful end. Start-Ups: Silicon Valley aired its final two episodes last week and the network says it has no plans for another season.

I tried to extract details from the show that warranted discussion but stopped a couple weeks ago for a very simple reason: The show was really boring — the one word you don’t want to use for reality television. “Inaccurate” is an understood quality; there are plenty of reasonable housewives in Beverly Hills. But “boring” is the kiss of death. Without compelling conflict, who cares?

The biggest factor working against the show was that — truth be told — startup life is not exciting to watch. Most of it is coding and evangelism. Engineers spend most of their time in front of a computer. Business folks spend most of their time crafting emails and doing conference calls. That gets old really fast.

So Bravo tried to cook up cat fights and dating drama, and brought in a hunky model for extra eye candy. But that’s not why we were watching; we signed on for an inside look at the tech business. Some drunken tiff over a boy is just a distraction; we can get that anywhere.

Essentially, Bravo should have gone all in. Forget the superflous drama. Get us inside those engineering meetings so we can see how the sausage is made. Most people don’t have a concept of “a release” works. Dwight and David were very real engineers. Let’s see how they make their magic, rather than getting quick passing conversations about JQuery. Talk about a “sandbox” or “bug hunts”. Make graphics that explain how a database works. This is the stuff that underpins our lives every day. Take the opportunity to explain it. It’s a tense moment when a software company pushes a new version of its software; a good producer would have tried to capture that, instead of the millionth time we’ve seen some entitled girl throw a drink in a guy’s face.

Bravo also made the mistake of putting a lot of eggs in the “We have to get funding!” basket. Seeing someone get a check for half a million dollars isn’t exciting. It’s abstract. “Great, a business got an influx of cash — so what?” It would have been far more interesting to have an investor as one of the characters. Let’s see how they think about the future of Silicon Valley. Dave McClure made a cameo in first episode; I was much more interested in his thought process for giving out the check, than how important it was for Ben and Hermoine Way to get their cash. We already have them pegged as spoiled, why would we care about them getting even more money?

I imagine, however, that getting that kind of access was very tough — if not impossible. The cool parts of Silicon Valley are the stuff that’s not made public. It’s fiercely competitive — even for pointless software. Inviting a camera to look over your shoulder isn’t a great idea.

No one ever believed Bravo was the right network to examine startup life, and someone will eventually do it correctly. There is fun and drama in startup life — but its around the business, not boozy nights on the town.